My New Calm

You get a day, nice and clear of any responsibilities during which you can get a lot of “work” done on a dress, and what do you do? Nothing. Well laundry and napping and reading and some cat lovin’. I did f-all on Friday but it was fine. I cleaned up my place thoroughly—when you live in your studio, you live in chaos.

Saturday ended with dinner at my favourite neighbourhood restaurant, La Brasserie, with Bruce.

•

It seems to me that something good has happened.  

Since my breakdown I’ve been trying to learn how to live with my symptoms but my symptoms kept changing. For example: I spent four of the past nine months learning to live with seizures that I no longer have. I believe this new and welcome sense of calm I feel is because my condition has stabilized.

I posited my insights with Dr. Shoja last week and her responses, as I wrote here afterwards, recognized and rewarded the advancement I felt I had made—I am living with a much clearer understanding of my condition and, therefore, how to live with it.

I’m okay with life with anxiety (C-PTSD) and stuttering. I am, as is said nowadays, “cool with that.” It may improve, but if it doesn’t I am absolutely fine with who I am today.

And this new calmness infuses the “work” I do on my dresses. And I’m feeling that there is life emerging in the script. I’m writing in entirely new way—I’m writing out of sequence. I’ve never ever done this before; technical writing makes you a slave to logic and/or chronology.

Today I will trash the sculpture dress and start again armed with a new sense of calm and confidence. And I’ll continue with this new way of writing I love.

I felt my emotions deeply when I learned that my friend Donna had been murdered by the man she loved for four decades. So when I felt feelings that matched those of a character in my script, I wrote while feeling that emotion. It was incredible and nothing like technical writing. It was absolutely thrilling.